"Well, to be sure, the style of political action has altered somewhat since those days. If political duties were what they were then,—if a gulf would open in Washington, for example,—you would be the fellow to plunge in, horse and all, for the good of the republic; or, if anything was to be done by putting your right hand in the fire and burning it off—or, if there were any Carthaginians who would cut off your eyelids, or roll you down hill in a barrel of nails, for truth and your country's sake,—you would be on hand for any such matter. That's the sort of foreign embassy that you would be after. All these old-fashioned goings on would suit you to a T; but as to figuring in purple and fine linen, in Paris or London, as American minister, you would make a dismal business of it. But still, I thought you might practise law in a wholesome, sensible way,—take fees, make pleas with abundance of classical allusions, show off your scholarship, marry a rich wife, and make your children princes in the gates—all without treading on the toes of your too sensitive moral what-d'-ye-call-ems. But you've done one thing like other folks, at least, if all 's true that I've heard."
"And what is that, pray?"
"What's that? Hear the fellow, now! How innocent we are! I suppose you think I haven't heard of your campaign in New York—carrying off that princess of little flirts, Miss Gordon."
Clayton responded to the charge only with a slight shrug and a smile, in which not only his lips but his eyes took part, while the color mounted to his forehead.
"Now, do you know, Clayton," continued Russel, "I like that. Do you know I always thought I should detest the woman that you should fall in love with? It seemed to me that such a portentous combination of all the virtues as you were planning for would be something like a comet—an alarming spectacle. Do you remember (I should like to know, if you do) just what that woman was to be?—was to have all the learning of a man, all the graces of a woman (I think I have it by heart); she was to be practical, poetical, pious, and everything else that begins with a p; she was to be elegant and earnest; take deep and extensive views of life; and there was to be a certain air about her, half Madonna, half Venus, made of every creature's best. Ah, bless us! what poor creatures we are! Here comes along our little coquette, flirting, tossing her fan; picks you up like a great solid chip, as you are, and throws you into her chip-basket of beaux, and goes on dancing and flirting as before. Aren't you ashamed of it, now?"
"No. I am really much like the minister in our town, where we fitted for college, who married a pretty Polly Peters in his sixtieth year, and, when the elders came to inquire if she had the requisite qualifications for a pastor's lady, he told them that he didn't think she had. 'But the fact is, brethren,' said he, 'though I don't pretend she is a saint, she is a very pretty little sinner, and I love her.' That's just my case."
"Very sensibly said; and, do you know, as I told you before, I'm perfectly delighted with it, because it is acting like other folks. But then, my dear fellow, do you think you have come to anything really solid with this little Venus of the sea-foam? Isn't it much the same as being engaged to a cloud, or a butterfly? One wants a little streak of reality about a person that one must take for better or for worse. You have a deep nature, Clayton. You really want a wife who will have some glimmering perception of the difference between you and the other things that walk and wear coats, and are called men."
"Well, then, really," said Clayton, rousing himself, and speaking with energy, "I'll tell you just what it is: Nina Gordon is a flirt and a coquette—a spoiled child, if you will. She is not at all the person I ever expected would obtain any power over me. She has no culture, no reading, no habits of reflection; but she has, after all, a certain tone and quality to her, a certain 'timbre,' as the French say of voices, which suits me. There is about her a mixture of energy, individuality, and shrewdness, which makes her, all uninformed as she is, more piquant and attractive than any woman I ever fell in with. She never reads; it is almost impossible to get her to read; but, if you can catch her ear for five minutes, her literary judgments have a peculiar freshness and truth. And so with her judgment on all other subjects, if you can stop her long enough to give you an opinion. As to heart, I think she has yet a wholly unawakened nature. She has lived only in the world of sensation, and that is so abundant and so buoyant in her that the deeper part still sleeps. It is only two or three times that I have seen a flash of this under nature look from her eyes, and color her voice and intonation. And I believe—I'm quite sure—that I am the only person in the world that ever touched it at all. I'm not at all sure that she loves me now; but I'm almost equally sure that she will."
"They say," said Russel, carelessly, "that she is generally engaged to two or three at a time."
"That may be also," said Clayton, indolently. "I rather suspect it to be the case now, but it gives me no concern. I've seen all the men by whom she is surrounded, and I know perfectly well there's not one of them that she cares a rush for."